Daddy's Girl

by Swati Chaturvedi

  Singh roared with laughter and, reminded by that comment about his own considerable protuberance, he leaned back and began his tender ministrations to his paunch. He drawled, pacing his words to his strokes, ‘Woh harami dalla hai. He will go anywhere for money. He has called me on this Nalwa case. I was trying to figure out the connection but now you have explained it.’

  Apoorva Kumar Sinha, before the service providers got to him, had been an excellent investigator—a natural fit with his conniving, manipulative nature. He felt the first stirrings of a long-forgotten excitement and said, ‘Yaar, last night when I was drinking Black Label . . . on the eighth peg I started analysing the case. I studied all the reports and case files, even the ones that you had sent me on the interrogation and, boss, I know it in my bones, Mrs Nalwa did it. We have to break her. My feeling is that the poor womanizing bastard is just covering up for her.’ Sinha’s chins waggled in sympathy for Mr Nalwa.

  Singh chortled and said with surprise, ‘Arey, from a fixer do you want to be a proper policeman again? And what happened with your divorce? ’

  Sinha nodded and said, ‘Arey, yaar. Teri ex-bhabi Renu is torturing me. She wants a bungalow in south Delhi; otherwise she will hold a press conference. She loves money!’

  Singh, who was inwardly horrified at the reckless way Sinha was confiding in him and did not want become party to his misogyny, hurriedly said, ‘We both know that the real issue here is how do we prove it in court without their confession? And those fuckers are hard-boiled. We have questioned them separately and together. And you know in our beloved country, hypocrisy is the only real virtue.’

  ‘When have you called them again? I will be there,’ said Sinha.

  ‘It’s not your cup of tea, fucker, because 7 a.m. is your hangover time,’ Singh said, laughing at his own clever references.

  ‘All the better,’ he said, winking. ‘We now have to crack this open as this choot CP has to be fixed.’

  A weary Arjun Nalwa was injected by his compounder, who was on 24/7 call, with a disposable syringe and wore his usual uniform of impeccably tailored white linen, which he hoped would project the confidence and reassurance he exuded in court.

  He looked expressionlessly at his wife, sitting at her dressing table, totally absorbed in her hourly routine of putting on her mask. As she deftly drew the eye-liner, Arjun tentatively ventured, ‘Do you want to wear so much make-up?’

  Cuckoo Nalwa’s hand did not falter on its deft course and she said tonelessly, ‘Why? Haven’t they heard of picture-perfect grief? My make-up is my business. I feel naked without it. Also, just shut up and mind your own business.’

  Unnerved, Arjun’s shoulders drooped and he tried to will his mind into blankness. After five minutes of silence, which felt like an eternity to him and which left him writhing in mental agony as to how he would survive the next thirty years with his own private monster, he said ‘We really should leave or we will get late. I have asked the lawyer to be present.’

  Applying the pink lipstick, Cuckoo finished, blotted her lips and met his eyes in the mirror, saying, ‘Let that Singh wait. Who cares?’

  Reaching the end of his tether, Arjun screamed, ‘I care, damn it, because if we are late he will arrest us, you crazy woman!’

  Basking in the dual satisfaction of her perfect make-up and her preferred past-time of baiting her husband, Cuckoo smiled. Thrilled that the goading had worked, she said, ‘Arjun, don’t I look perfect? Well worth the wait. Now, calm down. I am ready to go.’ She got up and adjusted her pink, floral dupatta over her tasteful cream salwar kameez. Ambika never listened to her opinion on clothes . . .

  At the police station, a hungover and irate Apoorva Kumar Sinha, with bleary eyes and under-eye pouches, waddled in and sank into Singh’s chair. He was irritated to see that Singh was looking clear-eyed. Scowling at him, Sinha said, ‘Why do you go to the gym? Those holy motherfuckers are late. Tell your PA to put the fear of god in them.’

  Singh had wanted to do exactly the same thing and gave crisp instructions over the intercom.

  Five minutes later, the Nalwas were ushered in, only to be confronted with two scowling police officials. Sinha, who was determined to get them to crack, got up and smashed his fist on the table. ‘Yeh tera chamber hai kya chootiya yah teri biwi kei baap ka ghar joh late aaya hai?’

  Mrs Nalwa looked horrified and panicked. Sinha turned to her and said, ‘Arey, denting painting kam nahi kar sakti? Shaddi karney wali hai yah beti ka, madam?’

  Mrs Nalwa felt waves of sickness crash over her and Mr Nalwa was completely appalled, yet felt too powerless to protest. For the first time in his life, he was shocked into a humiliating silence.

  Singh smoothly segued into his part and said, ‘Vakil sahib, madam, please sit down. Would you like some tea? Traffic must have been bad.’ But he made no reference or apology to Sinha’s crudity.

  Looking at him dimly though the haze that seemed to envelop him, Mr Nalwa sank down. Even his lawyer was late. Despite the cheque he just extracted from me yesterday, he thought savagely.

  Mrs Nalwa felt nauseous. She wanted to break out into a huge wail but sat shaking in her seat instead.

  The next moment their lawyer, Fixit Vadhera, breezed in, nodding cheerily and not bothering to apologize.

  ‘What is this?’ asked Singh pretending to be surprised. ‘You asked your lawyer to be present? You want to give a confession, Vakil sahib?’

  ‘You threatened to arrest me despite my cooperation, so I thought it would be better if my lawyer was present,’ said Mr Nalwa bitterly.

  Before Vadhera, who had sat down without being asked to and was cockily shuffling his papers, could utter a word Sinha smashed his fist on the table again and bellowed, ‘Arey, will this eunuch be able to save you and your wife?’ And then he leaned back and started laughing like a wobbling, malignant Buddha.

  Pointing to the lawyer, he said, ‘Kisne bola tujhe baethne ko? Who asked you to sit? Get up!’’

  The lawyer hastily got to his feet like a chastened schoolboy.

  So there would be no help from this quarter, realized Mr Nalwa dazedly.

  Acting as if Sinha had not been threatening them, Singh asked pleasantly, ‘So, Vakil sahib, have you had any second thoughts on what you told me yesterday? Your bungalow was locked, there was no sign of any entry or exit. Even your own security guards posted outside say no one came in or left after the main gate was locked, and the CCTV cameras show no sign of any entry or exit.’

  Mr Nalwa mumbled, ‘I don’t know how it happened but I was telling you the truth.’

  Singh said very gently, ‘You know, I have been a police official for twenty years, yet I have never seen a murder victim so tenderly handled after the killing. Ambika’s body looked like it had been ministered to with a loving mother’s touch. Do you really think a killer who shot her dead would tend to her, arrange all her soft toys around her? Draw up the sheet to her chin so lovingly? Even put fresh sheets on her? How did this mysterious murderer know where madam keeps her linen?’

  As Singh’s words rang around them and permeated the smelly government office, Mrs Nalwa drew an audible, gusty breath. Immediately, Mr Nalwa grabbed her hand hard, making her wince but calming her down.

  Still standing, the lawyer asked uncertainly, ‘Are you arresting them? How can they answer these questions? You are,’ and his voice shook slightly and ended with a squeal, ‘intimidating them.’

  ‘How?’ questioned Singh pleasantly. ‘I am questioning them in a reasonable fashion well within the bounds of the law. Do you see any third degree? You don’t want your client’s daughter’s killer to be caught?’

  Sinha jeered and laughed as if he remembered a private joke he seemed reluctant to share and addressing the room generally said, ‘Ab ghadhey bhi chawanprash kha rahe hein.’

  His comment left the nonplussed lawyer adrift. What was he supposed to do next? He looked at Mr Nalwa for a cue. Still clutching his wife’s hand, his mind a whirl, Mr Nalwa real
ized that he would have to get her away from this room. He sensed that she was on the verge of cracking and it would only take another question to tip her over the edge. Sinha’s jibes had broken her. He broke into sweat. His heartbeat speeded up as he looked into Singh’s determined eyes. Suddenly, he clutched the left side of his chest. He could not breathe. His grip on his wife’s hand grew lax. ‘Help me . . .’ he choked out, his face going red. ‘I am in pain. I think I am having a heart attack.’

  With alacrity, Vadhera jumped into the fray and said, ‘He is dying, let’s rush him to the hospital. Call an ambulance.’

  Mrs Nalwa sat there with unseeing eyes. She did not even look at her husband. If he was faking it, he was doing a good job of it. If he isn’t, he deserves it, she thought cruelly.

  Biting down disappointment, Singh thought close they were to cracking the case and said tonelessly, ‘Sure, let’s call an ambulance.’

  Sinha scowled and muttered abuses under his breath about Nalwa’s acting and then said loudly, ‘It’s probably gas, the rich professional’s disease.’

  The ambulance’s siren could be heard up in the interrogation room, but Singh took a last shot, ‘Do you want to keep talking, Mrs Nalwa?’

  She gave him a grotesque smile and without looking at her husband, who was still moaning, she said, ‘What on earth for? I am a loving, concerned wife. I want to take care of my husband who is having a heart attack.’

  Sinha realized that Mr Nalwa had bested them but tried a parting shot, ‘Accha, madamji, you are a very concerned wife but I have not even seen you looking at your husband to admire his acting right now.’

  Mrs Nalwa, who seemed to have got a second wind, smiled very sweetly at him.

  There was nothing to say as the paramedics came in and took Mr Nalwa away on a stretcher with camera crews crowding the office building for the second day running.

  Watching the action on the widescreen TV, Sinha growled, ‘Tell the admin to get new barricades. It looks terrible if we can’t protect the PHQ.’

  Singh’s RAX rang. It was the CP and he was livid. ‘What the fuck! You caused Mr Nalwa to have a heart attack?’

  Singh said quietly, ‘The man is acting. He had his lawyer present. His wife was about to crack.’

  ‘Bullshit. You better watch it or tomorrow you will be transferred to the Andamans and face a major penalty, which has given genuine heart attacks to many cops!’ screamed the CP.

  Singh felt like scratching his face off with the rage caused by the combined assault of the Nalwas and the CP.

  21

  Sitting up moments after the ambulance left the police headquarters, with a frenzied escort of OB vans careening crazily behind it, Arjun Nalwa, goaded beyond endurance, punched his wife hard on the shoulder and said, ‘Couldn’t you at least pretend along with me? I was trying to save you. Now, when we reach the hospital, you and the lawyer will go out and give a statement to the media about my near-fatal heart attack and the insensitive behaviour of the police.’

  Fixit Vadhera nodded along furiously. ‘At last, a good defence!’ It had finally dawned on him that this was Arjun’s wily plan and the mind behind it was the reason that his client commanded so much respect in the High Court and the Supreme Court. It also justified his vertiginous fees.

  Surveying his wife, Arjun added dispassionately, ‘Now take a wet towel and wipe the muck off your face. Or you might have to go to jail, my angel.’

  Realizing that she had goaded her husband to near breaking point in their private game of destroying each other, and remembering the ragged bites and the savage pain of Apoorva Kumar Sinha’s taunts, Cuckoo felt rare tears prick her eyes and her throat choke up as pressure built behind her eyes. But the damn tears never seemed to fall; they just choked her with the pain.

  She nodded mutely.

  Arjun relaxed back on his seat and wondered whether he was actually having a heart attack? He certainly had felt the pain. His mouth twisted as he thought, I must remember this feeling and eventually savour it . . . To be able to overcome it—the day I was laid low by that low-life scumbag, Apoorva Kumar Sinha.

  An insidious, obstinate voice kept insisting that it was Singh who had broken down his carefully constructed defences with the whole ‘mother’s love’ theory.

  He shut his eyes and tried to block out the memories.

  But he had come undone. It wasn’t just one memory of Ambika digging into his brain, but all seventeen years of it that breached his defences, leaving him unmoored. Remembering that final night with Babloo, he wept noisily. Even as he wept, Arjun was struck by the futility of his own tears. It would not change the outcome—a world without Ambika.

  Cuckoo could not allow herself to cry. She didn’t know how to console her husband. So after staring at him in incomprehension, she looked away.

  Meanwhile, the fixer lawyer, clearly regretting he was present, played with his phone.

  The ambulance had reached the most expensive hospital in Delhi, on Cuckoo’s insistence, and Arjun could not be carried inside as he could not stop crying. The doctors kept checking all his vital parameters. Everything was normal. After the third check, the in-charge of the heart command unit gave the sobbing man a mega sedative shot and put the entire hospital establishment out of its collective embarrassment and misery.

  Meera, having heard on the bush telegraph that Mrs Nalwa would be addressing an impromptu press conference, drove at breakneck speed to the hospital. Just as she was manoeuvring the last turn to the hospital, a BMW 3 series banged into her silver Corolla. As a woman emerged from the car, a furious Meera did a mental checklist. Banging bangles—check. Blonde highlights in her layered hair—check. Tight jeans with an overflowing muffin top—check. She was a newly-wed woman.

  Meera, incandescent and nearly sobbing with rage, screamed, ‘Are you insane? Who gave you a licence?’

  As Banging Bangles wanted to fight it out, Meera waved her aside impatiently and said, ‘Give me your insurance papers. I don’t have time for your junk.’

  Taking the papers from a now compliant BB, Meera rushed to the hospital. After parking her car, a hot and dishevelled Meera saw that she had missed some of Mrs Nalwa’s dramatic press conference on the hospital steps.

  Mrs Nalwa was speaking softly and looking significantly altered, as if she had shed some years with the many layers of heavy make-up having been scrubbed off.

  The reporters kept looking away from her face as if they had caught someone naked and it was rude to keep staring. Mrs Nalwa was unfazed at the media’s pretended coyness. She continued, ‘The police are lazy, corrupt and useless. This is even worse than my daughter’s death as they try to frame my husband. They have tortured and threatened us that they will frame and implicate us if we don’t confess. They keep us for hours to ensure we do not work, so we cannot afford a legal defence. The harassment has grown so much that my shattered husband, the sole bread-winner in my family, has suffered a heart attack caused by the vendetta of Arun Singh and Apoorva Kumar Sinha.’

  Enunciating their names clearly, Mrs Nalwa dissolved into sobs as the assembled reporters shouted questions to her. Fixit strutted forward importantly and said, ‘I am her lawyer. I am a witness to how they were tortured today by Singh and Sinha. I appeal to the commissioner to suspend them so a fair investigation can be carried out. My clients have been hounded; they are broken and finished. How can you ask these heartless questions? Do you, the media, now want to drive this grieving mother to a heart attack too?’ He hovered protectively near Mrs Nalwa, who let the tears flow freely.

  Meera had pushed her way forward into the mob and was pressed against some sweaty, smelly reporters. She noticed Mrs Nalwa’s expression, oddly at variance with the unchecked tears, and asked in a clear carrying voice, ‘If she is too upset and distraught to answer questions, why can’t you answer for her, Mr Vadhera? You are their lawyer. You claim you were present in the interrogation. Do you mean to say that Singh and Sinha tortured the Nalwas in the presence of their l
awyer?’

  Recognizing Meera, Mrs Nalwa looked at her with undisguised hate and sobbed loudly as she asked, ‘Do you work for the police?’

  Meera met her gaze calmly and said, ‘No, Mrs Nalwa. As you know I am a reporter. I just find it tough to believe that the police tortured you in the presence of your attorney.’

  Some reporters who had been covering the case since the murders, smiled at Meera’s retort. Mrs Nalwa flushed angrily as the tears dried up abruptly. Fixit, aware that they had made the breaking news across all channels, hastily decided that there was nothing more to be gained from this event.

  He held Mrs Nalwa’s elbow and said, ‘She is too upset to talk. I will answer the questions of some selected representatives later. My assistant will tell you who all are invited.’

  The reporters, buzzing like angry hornets, swooped down on the hapless assistant, who could barely withstand the onslaught. Cries of reporters claiming discrimination and unfairness rent the air and added to the chaotic proceedings. This provided Fixit the diversion he was looking for and he spirited Mrs Nalwa away.

  Inside, in a small room he patted her hand and said, ‘Well done! You were brilliant.’

  Mrs Nalwa swatted his hand away and looked at him in disgust. Her expression made him pause, but he continued, ‘We have controlled the news flow today; the police are on the back foot. Those two bastards might be suspended. Now, I want you to do an exclusive with Ila Rajesh Bhatt.’

  Ila Rajesh was the well-known king of prime time television, who unfailingly hogged the show himself and was known for his trademark hysteria, his manhandling and touching of guests in order to make them weep. He would then join them and these flowing tears were his personal signature along with his carefully set, shoulder-length hair. In person, he was an unabashed groupie of the powerful and famous, and made no bones about toadying to them. He fancied himself as India’s answer to Oprah and, with his galloping megalomania, he always thought he was way ahead of Oprah. He ruled the roost at METV, a resoundingly pro-government channel, and those being charitable to him thought he was considered the adopted son of the promoters. The uncharitable dismissed him as being their fixer-in-chief.